Viewers are resisting commercials in theaters and on tapes

"The public is never wrong," proclaimed film pioneer Adolph Zukor, and on such wisdom Hollywood was built. Zukor's maxim is as sound today as it was when Rodeo Drive was just a furrow in a field, but now it is being challenged by what may be the most offensive idea since Smell-O-Vision: commercials in movie theaters and on videocassettes.

The 1987 cassette of Top Gun was the first film to carry a commercial plug (Diet Pepsi was the sponsor), but since then the tapes of a dozen or so other movies have hawked everything from candy bars (Moonstruck, Dirty Dancing) to...